Psalm 53 - No One Does Good No Not Political Parties

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. If you are watching the video podcast today, you might notice that I have a steamed crabs hat.

That's right, from Single A affiliate, aberdeen Ironbirds, one of their alternate names, and went to a game not too long ago with one of my friends from church, and brought along my wife and my son and daughter.

Got my son, he wanted a steamed crabs hat, so I got him one and I got me one, so that way we could be matching, and really, really enjoyed that time together.

I would encourage you, if there's opportunities that you have to spend time with fellow Christians and those in your church, take advantage of that time. Please do so.

That's part of our growth as Christians, is being able to spend time with other believers, and sometimes that might look like pouring over God's Word together, but at other times, it might just look like having some fun, having a good time.

It might be Jesus in a boat fishing with the disciples. It might be, you know, it could take any one of a number of different ways that that might look. But we are in Psalm 53 today.

This one's a short one. So we're going to see how we end up on time. And I'm going to try and make this at least eight minutes, and we'll see if we get there.

But Psalm 53, the inscription on the Psalm says this for the choir director on Mahaleth, which is it's a word that they're not like 100% sure on the meaning of. Could be a particular type of instrument, could be a particular music tune.

But on Mahaleth is what this one's supposed to be. And this is one of the masquels of David. It's a specific type of song to be done to a kind of specific mood.

It's got a goal that it's working towards. And the Psalm says this, the fool says in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt and they do vile deeds.

There is no one who does good. God looks down from heaven on the human race to see if there is one who is wise, one who seeks God. All have turned away.

All alike have become corrupt. There is no one who does good, not even one. Will evildoers never understand?

They consume my people as they consume bread. They do not call on God. Then they will be filled with dread, dread like no other, because God will scatter the bones of those who besiege you.

You will put them to shame, for God has rejected them. Oh, that Israel's deliverance would come from Zion. When God restores the fortunes of his people, let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.

So here there is this Psalm, and it's really just a, God, everything looks bad, and we are in desperate need of you to come and rescue us.

And I don't know about you, not every day of my life is like this, but I've definitely had days where perhaps there were people that may be well-meaning, maybe not well-meaning, that they spread evil about people that I love, or people that said

things about me that were not true, or people that kind of disparaged Christians at large. Those times when all of us can go like, hey, why is this evil person seeming to get away with this?

And this psalm, though it's small, it's six verses, it's an important part of scripture, and it's something that even the Apostle Paul would quote in Romans chapter 3, as he's writing to those young believers in the capital city of the Roman Empire,

and he's trying to help them realize that whether they are some of the Gentiles that had accepted Christ, or whether they were some of the Jews that had accepted Christ, and now had kind of come into or back into Rome, and were finding Gentile

believers, and there was some arguing with each other on like, okay, do we still have to circumcise our children? Do we observe the Sabbath? Do we observe the different festivals and things that the Jewish people did? Can we meet offered to idols?

How do we interact with these different types of Christians? And Paul encourages them. He says, hey, what's important about you guys is not your differences, it's the fact that you are at your core essence the same.

And Jesus came and saved you, and he saved you all together, and he made you part of one family. And it's not that, you know, you Jewish believers are better, and you gent- or on the other hand, that you Gentile believers are better.

He says, every single one of you was a sinner, condemned apart from God. But Jesus made it so that we could be part of God's family, that we could be forgiven.

I'm going to quote just this section here of Romans 3 that Paul quotes from this Psalm, Psalm 53, as well as some other Psalms that we've looked at before. He says, there is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands.

There is no one who seeks God. All have turned away. All alike have become worthless.

There is no one who does what is good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They deceive with their tongues.

Vipers venom is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood.

Ruin and wretchedness are in their paths. In the paths of peace, they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Paul says, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are subject to the law, so that every mouth may be shut, and the whole world may become subject to God's judgment.

For no one will be justified in his sight by the works of the law, because the knowledge of sin comes through the law. So here what Paul tells these believers is, from what the Old Testament says, everyone is under judgment.

Everyone has sinned, and there is no one righteous before God. Then that's why he says in verse 21, but now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, attested by the law and the prophets.

The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ. To all who believe, since there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

God presented him as an atoning sacrifice in his blood, received through faith to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint, God passed over the sins previously committed.

God presented him to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be righteous, and declare righteous the one who has faith in Jesus.

So even as Paul looks back at this Psalm, he sees it as testifying to the fact this isn't just the other evil people in your life that this Psalm is talking about. This is talking about all of us. And it really starts there in verse number one.

The fool says in his heart that there is no God. A fool, when the Bible talks about it, it's not just saying like, hey, here's a stupid person, here's a person with a low IQ.

When the Bible talks about a fool, it's talking about a person that either genuinely in their beliefs or in their actions say that God does not exist. Someone that says, I'm not accountable to God.

I don't believe that he's really there or that he's going to take me to task for what I've done. And so I'm gonna live my life as though I am not going to answer to the Lord. I'm gonna do what I want to do.

I'm gonna do to others what I want to do. I'm gonna think what I wanna think. I'm gonna say the words that I want to say because I don't really believe that there's a God or that God is going to hold me accountable.

And the Bible says rightly that that is foolish thinking. All of us one day are gonna give an account of ourselves before God. Romans 14 would tell us that.

The question is, what are you going to say to God on that day? Will you be able to say, God, I heard your word. I read your Bible.

I heard about you on the Tabernacle Talk Podcast. And what you told me to do, I did. You told me to believe in Jesus for salvation.

And I believed in Jesus. And then you told me once I've believed, once I've saved, once I'm saved, you told me to follow you. And I did it.

You told me what sin was. And I stayed away from sin. Or you told me what righteousness was.

And I did good in your sight and to others. When God comes, will you be a fool who has thought that there is no final reckoning? Or will you be one that even today chooses?

God, I know you're real. I know you're out there. I know you've promised to come again.

And so I'm going to respond to you in obedience and faith and belief. David here continues, They are corrupt and they do vile deeds. There is no one who does good.

The Bible paints a very different picture than maybe pop psychology does today. Pop psychology would say everyone's pretty much naturally good and just kind of left to our own devices.

If we didn't have religion, if we didn't have maybe money or capitalism, we would be good people inherently. And the truth is that no matter what system you put people in, no matter what scenarios they grow up with, we are innately evil.

It's what's called the depravity of mankind. That though none of us are as fully evil as we possibly could be, though some people have done their best to try, all of us have a heart that is wicked.

All of us struggle with fighting sin before Jesus with that sin nature that indwells us, that we are, as Paul would say in Romans 6, like we're enslaved to sin. We can't help but do only what we want, only what Satan wants.

And we don't do life the way that God would have us to. We might do some good things and good actions. You don't have to be a Christian to help an old lady across the street or to help someone out with their groceries or to give money to someone.

But we're not going to do it with the heart that God has for us. We're not going to do it the way that he wants us to. We're not going to do it with the motivations that God has for us apart from Jesus.

So how do we then think about our world? Well, I'd say this. Sometimes we can think these other people over here, they are uniquely evil.

Frankly, this is an election year and many people seem to have this opinion that, yes, anyone who thinks like me is basically good. And yeah, they might have some flaws.

They might have some hiccups, but all of the people on the other side, that other candidate, that person that's voting for that, that is a uniquely evil, terrible person. And frankly, I just remind you of this. All of us are sinful.

All of us are evil. And without Christ, without Christ like working in our heart and life, we would not be righteous in any sense. And right now, like our righteousness, as Isaiah would tell us, our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.

We are nothing special. And so as we look at people, let us look with love.

If there are things that people are espousing that are evil, that are not right, that don't line up with God and his word, let's not have the opinion of like, oh man, like they came up with this like super evil scheme and they're like trying to

destroy and whatever. We can have that mindset, but we don't realize what Paul told us in Ephesians 6, that our battle, our fight isn't with flesh and blood.

And Paul during that time was speaking to Christians in a Roman environment where Paul would be killed by the, well, partially religious, but by the political people of his day.

And so if even he who was literally physically attacked by people in his day, if he said that the people aren't the enemy, then how much more for us today that like we're arguing over policies, we're arguing over different things.

And certainly there are some aspects to voting that are, especially this year, that have wide ranging effects even on life and different things like that.

But we need to realize that if anyone is espousing something that is anti-God, that they are not doing it because of a uniquely like evil sinister mindset on their part. They genuinely think that they are doing good, that they are doing what's right.

They think they're doing best by other people. They have been tricked, as Paul would say in 2 Corinthians, that their eyes have been blinded by the God of this world. And so don't look at other people viewing them as the enemy.

Realize all of us have sinned. All of us are in a spot before God where we are in condemnation and in need of salvation. And that doesn't just go for you, that goes for other people.

And why would you expect people that perhaps don't know God to espouse the same beliefs as you who know God?

That as you look at your life and as you look at your politics, you're looking at it through a lens of like, hey, here's what God's Word says and so here's what I'm going to do as a result of it.

And for people that don't have God's Word as that basis, of course they're not going to come to the same conclusions as you.

So have charity, have love, have a forgiving and a forbearance in your spirit that we as Christians should not ever be the ones that demonize those that, number one, don't know Christ, but number two, for those maybe believers that are in a different

spot from us in some different ways and so they might have another outlook on politics or different things. Let's not have a heart of hatred and animosity towards them, one that would assign motives that they haven't said, that would slander and

impugn character to say, if someone doesn't do exactly what I do, then they are wrong and headed to hell. They are part of a secret evil cabal to overthrow my nation. Let's not be like that.

Let's realize if I am in disagreement with someone else, and I believe that I'm right according to the word of God, then that is that God has been gracious and good to me and has led me to this point in my life and my beliefs.

And so I'm going to pray that God gives that same grace to other people. I think of what Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 2. I might have read this passage a good bit ago.

Paul says this, The Lord's servant must not quarrel, but must be gentle to everyone, able to teach and patient, instructing his opponents with gentleness. That there are opponents as we follow the Lord, but we are to instruct them with gentleness.

He says perhaps God will grant them repentance, leading them to the knowledge of the truth that they may come to their senses and escape the trap of the devil. How do we get people to snap out of it, to see life the way that God does?

Instruct them in gentleness and pray that God will grant them repentance. So that's from verse one, verses two and three, that God looks down from heaven on the human race to see if there is one who is wise, one who seeks God.

All have turned away, all alike have become corrupt. There is no one who does good, not even one. And that's why God sent Jesus, because we were condemned.

None of us were good enough. None of us were wise in God's eyes. And so God sent Jesus.

Then David writes, Well, evildoers never understand. They consume my people as they consume bread. They don't call on God.

Then they will be filled with dread, dread like no other, because God will scatter the bones of those who besiege you. That when God comes, he's going to bring justice.

And while that ought to comfort our hearts to know that no wrong will be unpunished, we ought to have a love for other people that says, I don't want them to experience condemnation. I want them to know Jesus like I know Jesus.

And then as the Psalm ends, oh, that Israel's deliverance would come from Zion. When God restores the fortunes of his people, let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad. One day God will save his people in full.

And it's going to be an amazing, incredible, wonderful day. And when God saves us, our natural reaction is rejoicing and gladness. If God has saved you today, you ought to rejoice and be glad in it.

Would people characterize you as perpetually grumpy or like an eor, or would they say, hey, so-and-so?

Yeah, like the circumstances in their life are not always great, but there's always like an underlying joy in their life that even when they look at big problems in their life or their world, there's something that still motivates them towards not

despair or fuming anger. There's something that pushes them towards belief, something that calls them to rejoice in the Lord always. And I hope that would be true first and foremost in my life, and then I hope it'd be true in yours.

Thank you for tuning in today and hope that it was an encouragement to you. It was kind of a interesting detour, but really just kind of felt like the Lord was leading in that way.

One of the best things that we can do as we interact with other people is to have the mind and character and emotions of our Savior. And as He has expressed His love and His forbearance and patience for us, we ought to give that to others as well.

Hold your convictions, but hold them in a way that, like Jesus, is gentle and lowly. Hold them in a way that you are gently instructing others and praying that God would give them repentance to see the truth. Thanks for tuning in.

Look forward to being with you next episode.